


Coolth (The Dog Days of Summer Remix)

by kinetikatrue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Lie Low At Lupin's (Harry Potter), Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26791171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue
Summary: This overly-warm summer might be good for something after all.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	Coolth (The Dog Days of Summer Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elennare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elennare/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Warmth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5709892) by [Elennare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elennare/pseuds/Elennare). 



It's shaping up to be the hottest summer Remus has seen since he was a child - even the wizard who gives the weather report on the wireless has been saying so, nattering endlessly about the drought of '76 and its effect on the population of gnomes. His tomatoes don't mind it terribly, nor his courgettes, but he's not built for such usage, himself. He hasn't much in the way of warm weather clothing - and the cooling charms on the cottage are ancient, not nearly up to dealing with the recent heat. Even helped along by the thick stone walls.

It's nearly sunset, and sweat still trickles down the small of his back, leaving Remus torn between hurrying to finish with the garden chores (pulling impertinent weeds, watering anything looking a trifle peaky, picking radishes and new carrots for supper) and get out of the heat - and not overheating himself further; so far he's settled on the not entirely satisfactory compromise of moving with all due speed.

Sirius nearly knocks him over when he appears out of thin air, clutching a packet of biscuits in one hand and an old teacup in the other - _port-key_ \- and barely missing the runner beans on their poles as he hits the ground arse-first. "Moony!" he says, grinning up at Remus. "Are you going to ask me in?"

"I've got to finish picking the veg first," Remus says, mildly.

"There isn't a spell for that?"

"Not if you're me - and you only want the ripe ones. And only the radishes." He'd never been meant to be a wizarding farmer - anybody who'd seen his marks in herbology would agree - so mostly he did things the muggle way, aside from charming pests away and turning the watering into less of a chore with a judicious _aguamenti_.

"And I suppose we do want the radishes?"

"If you're staying for supper, we do." And twice as many, once Sirius finds out he's planted a particularly peppery variety. "Now, make yourself useful and help me with the carrots."

That gets him a shake of Sirius's shaggy head and a smile - but moments later he's set the teacup and biscuits aside, and rolled up into a crouch (ignoring Remus's hand), and is asking, "now, which ones are those? They didn't come up much in Herbology - or Muggle Studies…"

Remus thinks he might be glad for something simple he can do, and all the better that it's _for Remus_ \- he certainly doesn't complain of the heat, the way Remus would like to, and he's pale, even for him; it seems for the best that Remus simply leave him to it - whatever has brought him to Wales will keep that long, at least, if he hasn't brought it up already.

***

"'E said to lie low here," Sirius says, around a mouthful of half-chewed biscuit. It's from the packet he was clutching when he'd turned up in Remus's garden and nearly took out the runner beans - uninvited, but it's not as though he'd ever really needed an invitation, even when Remus had thought him a traitor. Now he's sprawled across the hearthrug with them, back to the cold grate, and he's spraying crumbs everywhere. With a bit more red-and-gold it might almost be like being back in the Gryffindor common room.

Remus doesn't like to think how Sirius managed to acquire his packet - not on account of the money, no, it's just that they're a muggle brand, and Sirius in a muggle shop has always been a chancy thing at the best of times. After a decade spent in Azkaban - mostly as a dog - well. He'll be lucky if Sirius only struck the shopkeeper as an odd duck, and not as a hippie, on a bit more than just a visit to the neighborhood. At least it won't have been _his_ neighborhood, on account of the port-key.

"Came here last, of course, after I'd gone 'round to all the others." There's the crunch of another biscuit disappearing into Sirius's mouth, whole.

Remus continues standing at the worktop, facing away from Sirius, fiddling with the tea things. When they'd been students - when they'd been young, really - Sirius had always wanted an audience, no matter what he had to say, but now - now it's anyone's guess. Even odds as to whether somebody paying attention will get him talking or make him clam up completely. This is the closest he's gotten to saying why he's turned up, so far, and the last thing Remus wants to do is spook him. He drops sugar into both their mugs, instead.

The silence stretches on - thickening the still, somewhat stifling air - broken only by Sirius's crunching.

"He's back." The two words are all that's necessary to get it across what Sirius means, though he does continue after. "Properly. With a body and everything. Turns out Harry being in the tournament was an entirely different plot than we thought it might be…"

***

Remus has barely even had the stove on recently except to boil water for tea - It's been cold collations three meals a day. Tonight's mains will be the cold meat pie from the village pie shop, sitting on a plate on the worktop. They'll have it with the bread and cheese and pickle - and a few of the last of last year's apples - piled in Remus's arms. And the fine pile of carrots and radishes they'd brought in from the garden - Sirius had turned out to be a quick study on the subject of how to judge from the fronds and the little of the carrot you could see, which would be ripest. Quick-pickled in vinegar and a bit of sugar and salt, they'd do nicely - if Sirius didn't eat the radishes raw before he could get to them. "Stop that."

And Sirius snatches the hand holding a radish back. "Oh, fine, spoil-sport."

"I'm doing something with the carrots, at least," Remus says, firmly. He'd known the radishes were a lost cause from the start - but it didn't do to not try.

"It's your kitchen." _Your - or, as James had liked to say about their room in Gryffindor tower, our - rules._

"I'm only renting it. Also, do you think i don't know by now when it's not worth fighting you on something?"

"I'm quite well-trained, as you should know." Sirius grins. "See, I still know how to sit. And stay."

"You're feral, is what you are - but if your knife skills haven't gone entirely, turn the carrots into matchsticks and put them in this." Remus says, shaking his head as he puts a crockery bowl down on the worktop in front of Sirius.

Sirius's knife skills haven't gone - unsurprisingly - and so the short interval left before dinner is spent in slicing and chopping and setting out, in companionable silence. Which should feel odd, Remus finds himself thinking - Sirius's endless flow of tales was such a constant of their previous lives - but is, instead, simply...nice. Which is, in itself, an odd word to apply to Sirius. But in the too-warm room, in this interlude before things are once more asked of them, it somehow fits.

***

The Wizarding world doesn’t particularly ‘do’ modern, but it hadn’t been as a big a shock for Remus when he’d turned up at Hogwarts as an eleven year old as it would be for most muggle-borns these days. He’d come from a small village in Wales that _did_ have electricity, but barely. And most of its inhabitants, when the rugby was on, went down the pub for it. It hadn’t been such a change as all that to leave it behind. Modern hadn't been nearly so modern then.

He’s ended up in a similar sort of place to where he’d come from, this past year, having once again been forced to leave Hogwarts’ embrace behind - and it's been a good a place as any to be under the circumstances - but when he considers it through Sirius's eyes, he has to admit that it probably seems a trifle small and shabby, for all that it _is_ a wizarding cottage. Especially since the cooling charms still aren't up to the task of dealing with the unusual heat, even at night. Two bodies in the bed don't help with that particular problem, either, not when the bed's in a sleeping loft, and heat, as always, rises. 

So Remus knows Sirius isn't asleep any more than he is - and he's really not sure why he startles at the touch to his side.

"Moony." Sirius sounds amused and apologetic, both at once.

"You know I'm bad at sharing." He'd tried to offer to sleep on the floor - or downstairs on the settle. 

Sirius had laughed at him, said that if anybody should be doing that it should best be him, seeing as how he was the one who could turn into a bloody great dog at will. _And was as used to sleeping that way as any other at this point_ \- that went unsaid. Sirius laughs again, now - he does know, as well as anybody in the world, and still he took his chances on sharing the bed - and says, "they're going to want to open up Grimmauld Place - well, Dumbledore is." 

It's a bit out of nowhere, but Remus can hear the words he isn't saying, just the same. _Sirius will have to return to his hated childhood home._ "Going to take advantage and piss on the troll's leg umbrella stand?"

Sirius laughs at that, properly, a bark of laughter that sounds more than a bit like Padfoot for all that Sirius is currently entirely human. "Shed on everything - particularly Mater and Pater's beds."

Which really means: spend as much time as he can avoiding dealing with everything he feels as a human, by continuing to live as Padfoot - a habit he's clearly gotten entirely too used to.

Which shows in Sirius's ability to share a bed peaceably, too. As they go back to lying in the dark, side by side, Remus tries not to flinch back from his accidental intrusions - at least not noticeably - although he's not entirely sure he's successful. He's not gone untouched in the years since his world pretty much ended in the course of a week, but he's never once stayed the night in all that time. And even before then, he'd never been easy with sharing a bed with another person. He doesn't think he can be faulted for not having adjusted to having Sirius back, and back in his personal space. Sirius may have always been a special case that way, but for all the past seems to be back to stay, there's still the decade and a half of living without him Remus did in there, getting in the way.

"I think I just might be properly warm enough again," Sirius says, in a relatively peaceable lull, voice curling through the air in the dark. "Finally." 

And Remus finds himself laughing, helplessly, a trifle ruefully, because isn't that just exactly how their lives always go. "Well, if this weather isn't enough to do it, I suppose there's always the making a bonfire and dancing in it trick."

"Ticklish, that."

And Remus can still feel far too much by way of Sirius's ribs as he darts out a hand to suit action to suggestion - not that he has room to talk, there - but they are, indeed, warm. _Alive, and entirely real._ "You'll be wishing it was cooler soon enough."

"Or missing the warmth..." Sirius is trying to squirm away, though there's little enough room for him to squirm into.

But even while renewing his attack, Remus can fill in the rest: out in the field, in terrible weather, or faced with trekking through an unexpected bog. But if there's room for this between them, now, he thinks they might be able to face whatever the future brings. Together. 


End file.
